Alassane Ouattara

Alassane Ouattara (1 January 1942-) was President of Cote d'Ivoire from 4 December 2010, succeeding Laurent Gbagbo.

Biography
Alassane Ouattara was born in 1942 in Dimbokro, Cote d'Ivoire, descended paternally from the rulers of the Kong Empire (also called the Ouattara Empire). In 1965, he received a political science degree from Drexel University in Pennsylvania. In 1991, he married French businesswoman Dominique Nouvian while working for the International Monetary Fund, and from 1990 to 1993 he served as Prime Minister of Cote d'Ivoire. Henri Konan Bedie exiled him after he attempted to expose government corruption, but in 1999 he returned home after he was ousted in a military coup. In 2010, he defeated Laurent Gbagbo in a presidential election, and Gbagbo refused to hand over control of the government to him, leading to the Second Ivorian Civil War of 2010-2011 and intervention by the French Army. He assumed office in 2011, and he was later re-elected. In 2016, terrorism was introduced to the country with an al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb attack, the 2016 Grand-Bassam shootings, but the army was able to kill all six terrorists.